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Last weekend the first tournament of the year took place in Antwerp. It’s called First blood and this year it was a masters format event. 23 players showed up and considering about 8 regular attendees had other engagements this year, that’s an amazing number (for Belgium).

Once again a special thanks to the Puppeteers and Pressganger Nicolaï (Rynar) for hosting the event and making it a great experience each year.

I took my convergence to the event and ended up going 2/2, which is a good result considering I just started playing my lists around New Year.

TIER 1
—Requirements—
The army can only include the models listed above.
—Benefits—
Enigma Foundries are FA 4.

TIER 2
—Requirements—
The army includes two or more Enigma Foundries.
—Benefits—
Reduce the point cost of Enigma Foundries by 1.

TIER 3
—Requirements—
The army includes three or more Clockwork Vessel units.
—Benefits—
Clockwork Vessel units gain Advance Deployment.

TIER 4 – SELECTED
—Requirements—
The army includes two or more heavy vectors.
—Benefits—
For each heavy vector in Axis’ battlegroup, place a heavy warjack wreck marker anywhere within 20″ of the back edge of Axis’ deployment zone after terrain has been placed but before either player deploys his army. Wreck markers cannot be placed within 3″ of a terrain feature or another wreck marker.

We played 4 rounds in total. The first round was Destruction:

My opponent was Davy, a Cryx player from Hasselt. His caster pairing was Denny3 / Scaverous.

I looked at his lists and saw some armor cracking potential and I was unsure if my Lucant list would deal with it well enough. He also didn’t have much shooting at all (aside from a Kraken in one list) which meant deceleration wouldn’t do much.

I haven’t put my Lucant across from armor cracking enough yet to judge if the list can or cannot take certain match combos and that makes me reach for Axis more then I should. With Axis I feel I can force things by throwing models into the opposition over and over. It’s the idea where lots of small punches form one big punch over time I guess. And a massive wall of models is a massive wall of models, the other army needs a large volume of attacks so it can A remove lots of models and B remove more than I can return turn after turn.

I chose my axis list and he opted to use his Denny3 list.

Deneghra, the Soul Weaver – WJ: +4

– Skarlock Thrall

– Deathripper – PC: 4

– Kraken – PC: 19

Bane Lord Tartarus – PC: 4

Necrotech – PC: 1

– Scrap Thrall

Soul Trapper – PC: 1

Soul Trapper – PC: 1

Bane Knights – Leader & 9 Grunts: 10

Bane Thralls – Leader & 9 Grunts: 8

– Bane Thrall Officer & Standard – Bane Thrall Officer & Standard 3

I don’t remember who won the roll off, but I do think Davy got to choose sides, just not if it was because he opted to or because I chose to have the first turn.

I was able to somewhat steer the flow of the Cryx troops by putting axis’s razor wall next to the objective at the edge of the zone, leaving a gap between the objective and the wall that was smaller than a small base.

Having more troops than the Cryx list and limiting the access to the zone meant the Cryx troops would not be free to move all around as they pleased. The Kraken also flanked the troops limiting their advance in the other direction as well.

I got lucky early on when one Reductor was able to spray the arcnode and took out one of the Soul trappers in the process. This removed any hope of collecting should on that flank for Cryx.

Most bane knights died to POW 13 sprays from the reductors taking few victims in return. The bane thralls came in small numbers bit by bit and were easy to deal with that way.

Tartarus made a charge and was counter charged by the Conservator and with Onslaught + hand of Vengeance he was killed on the spot, not even able to make his charge attack.

The main problem for me was the Kraken touching the zone and making scoring impossible. It took me 3 turns and the feat but I took it down.

I the end I had the zone swarmed with troops and all he had left was Denny and a Scarlock. Denny removed quite a bit of my troops herself, however casters don’t contest…so it didn’t mean much for the scenario.

Attrition is was the main tactic (and the general theme for convergence at this point really). And when you say attrition you say time consumption. At the end clocks were running low and mistakes were made. I was too obsessed with setting things up so that Denny would be tempted to go on a killing spree while making the assassination look less likely (full camp and a circle of 6 ADO models surrounding the caster). With only 3 min left on the other end of the clock tempting the other side to spend lots of time on attacks was a decent play. In hindsight I could have ran my caster into the zone and scored the final 2 points. Instead I scored only 1. Denny made her attempt to assassinate Axis and I was lucky no dice spikes happened and got away with 0 damage. Won the game with 5-0 on scenario.

All-in-all a good game, first time facing Cryx after switching to Convergence again, so not a bad result.

The 2nd game I was matched with another Cryx player. A Dutch player called Sietse. I can’t remember what his second list was in the pairing but he opted to drop his pSkarre list.

I deployed pretty wide so I could get my units all over the board ASAP. On turn 2 I managed to shoot one of the Soulhunters with a Reductor (High rolls do happen). I moved up conservatively trying not to give away the entire army.

Seeing both Gerlak and Tartarus on the other side gave me a headache since those combined alone would tilt attrition in his favor and that’s without considering the feat and other attacks.

I felt like it was going to be a long hard battle and I would have to keep focused in order to stay in the game.

Then on his 2nd turn he feats and sends Gerlak in. He pacmans his way around and ends up smack in the middle of my troops. I decide to counter charge with the Conservator who has Iron Aggression and Hand of Vengeance. I manage to do only 3 damage, could have been a bit better tbh, on an average role that should have been 5 damage (pow 17 + 10 = 27 vs armor 22) and a slight spike of rolling 13 would have meant Gerlak was no more. I did roll some amazing dice on the soul hunter before so I guess it all evens out in the end ^^.

Gerlak continues his pac man chain and I decide to counter charge him with my caster. This time I do manage to kill him outright, however it also lost me the game. Axis got charged by 4 Sat Raiders under feat (desperate pace and good speed get you places).

I took 2 attacks of which the last one only needed to do 1 point.

I shouldn’t have been so greedy, and it would have saved my casters life. That being said, I don’t know how much of my army would have survived that turn. Gerlak pretty much removed as much as I can return on his own.

I do have some ideas on how to play it next time. I just made a rookie mistake in my first game with Axis against a pretty amazing caster played by a pretty decent player, so I’m not feeling too bad about the outcome there.

In my third game I went up against Eric, a Khador player from Gent. His pairing was Old Witch / Karchev.

The scenario was Two Fronts:

Both Karchev and Old witch had a ton of armor in their list, and while old witch could be handled by Lucan just fine, Karchev seemed like he would be able to take that list down a little too smoothly. Axis may not have the armor cracking required to take on any of these lists but then he does have enough bodies to keep it busy for a long time while he nibbles at the armor.

I dropped my Axis list, he opted to drop Old Witch, and this was the list:

I was able to place my razor wall in a good spot so it blocked the movement of the kayazy early on, which bought me some freedom. He put the kayazy in one zone, the conquest and Spriggan in the other. Behemoth stood in between the zones. The old with was in a trench at the end of his friendly zone with the kayazy and the war dog close.

I swarmed my friendly zone with a unit of obstructors and a unit of reductors; a unit of obstructors remained more central and the remaining unit of Reductors and obstructors went into the enemy zone.

I had 2 big issues, the kayazy could get to defense levels no combine could hit without a dice spike with Iron Flesh and the combination of Conquest / Spriggan / Behemoth was challenging my power output on the damage end.

I ended up clocking myself, I removed the spriggan, the conquest was half gone and the Behemoth didn’t look to alive either (still alive though). During one of the old witch’s killing sprees she did get counter charged and took a big hit from my Conservator.

I did something then which may put me on the podium for sportsmanship but it also lost me the game. I reminded the other player that the Old witch isn’t immune to free strikes when she does her little move after killing a model. The free strike (with Onslaught and Hand of Vengeance) would have almost certainly ended her and won me the game.

Still it was a fun and certainly challenging game for both sides.

My 4th round I faced Tim, a Menoth player from Antwerp and he was Iron listing Anston Durst.

I had played Axis 3 rounds, and so I really wanted to drop Lucant at least one time, just to be able to get some more experience with him. The benefit of facing a player who iron lists is that you can choose whatever list you want and you already know what you will be facing up front.

I saw nothing that really threatened my Lucant list except the jacks if they combined their efforts, but on a split scenario I could make that work.

In my second turn I was facing Anstons feat. The feat could have been an issue however, the 2nd jack was on the flank and a few inches out of Anston’s control and Anston for some reason hadn’t used cornerstone, so drags were a possibility.

I had the Axiom Aim and shoot the Reckoner in front of Anston and I sadly left it on 1 box. Considering this was the only jack in control for the next turn, and it had lost its cortex, it was still good since all real treats to my models were not in a position where they could make a dent.

Both TEP’s just sprayed what they could all game long removing a nice amount of the infantry. The Menoth player ended the game because he realized he couldn’t muster the force required to go up against and axiom and 2 Teps and behind the 3 huge bases there was no chance of getting to Lucant either.

Conclusion

2 win / 2 loss is a result I’m happy with at this point in time. Especially considering it could have been 3/1 looking at my 3rd round.

I’m not going to make changes to my lists as I didn’t spot any real flaws or shortcomings I could solve by swapping models. Convergences doesn’t have multiple options for each role at this point and the units that are there do a solid job.

All I really need to do now is get more practice. Mainly to see what matchups each of my lists can or can’t handle, there is some middle ground between the 2 lists and it’s not so clear which one comes out on top in that area.

I’m having fun and I’m improving with the faction I like the most fluff / looks wise so all is good.

My next painting project will be Axis, I’m currently making the base for him, after that I’ll start painting, so more painting news soon…

Harm is far from an unknown player and I knew it would be an interesting game. Also Cryx vs Cryx is never dull.

I opted to play my eDenny list against him, as eDenny is pretty decent against Cryx. I decided I would have Nightmare select Deathjack as its prey and I also used my tier4 bonus to put pursuit on him.

He had the withershadow combine in his list so putting 3 upkeeps out and risking 9 damage as a result of disbinding wasn’t a good plan. Putting one upkeep on a piece that you normally like to move around was a solid move in my book, as I hoped it would affect his deployment.

Both the withershadow and Deathjack ended up on the right side of the board and this made it so that I could put upkeeps out on the left side without having to fear them being removed.

The game was one big attrition grind on both sides, in the end I was up on attrition by more than a bit, but my clock ran out giving him the win. Under normal odds I would have lost nightmare, but fate decided otherwise as Death Jack missed all but one of his attacks and did minimal damage.

In the end it proves that attrition isn’t just a game of killing more than you lose, it’s also meant to occupy your opponent and make the clock count. All in all it was a fun game and time management will forever be my weakness (until I finally manage to fix that flaw ofc)

Harm ended up winning the event.

Round 2

Scenario: Fire Support

My opponent was Nele, a new warmachine player and she opted to play eHaley.

When I read Nele’s list sheet, I noticed no pHaley and no upkeep removal in the eHaley list, this made me instantly choose my eDenny list.

For my Tier 4 bonus, I opted to put Marked for death on Gorman, Pursuit on the boomhowlers and curse of shadows on the Defender.

Nele played a decent game, however she’s still new to the game and made some mistakes, and I did give a few pointers when she opted for certain abilities etc.

The game ended with a 5-0 on control points, due to 2 turns of killbox and a dominate on the flag.

Round 3

Scenario: Incursion

My opponent was Koen Vliegen, I have met the guy in numerous events, but we always seemed to dodge each other when it came to pairings, until now. He plays Retribution, and as a former ret player I do have some insight into their abilities.

His pairing was Issyria / Garryth.

I contemplated my list choice for a bit as the Issyria list seemed like it would be his drop, but then it had no magic weapons and he had plenty in his Garryth list.

I had played my eDenny list 2 times now so I would lock myself into 3shade if I dropped her once more.

He won the roll, opted to go first and I chose the side with the wall (because you know).

His list came at me like an avalanche, making Satyxis raiders look slow. Turn1 he was pretty much at my advanced deployment zone.

I had to remove as much as I could, so I loaded up the Kraken and started shooting. The small gun made some shots and the results were not impressive at all. The main gun shot at a ua, missing and the shot drifted 6 to 6, and landed on top of Issyria and Syslyss, one boosted roll later no more syslyss.

The blackbanes ran up and tried to tie up as much of the rifleman and one unit of invictors. Because the Phoenix was the only model with a magic weapon, I could keep up the interference game for a bit.

The soulhunters tried their best to thin out the halbardiers staring them in the face, sadly their efforts didn’t add much.

After the attrition had turned against me I had but one option and that was to look for any viable way to assassinate the other caster, something 3Shade is pretty good at.

At the start of my opponents turn it seemed such an opportunity wouldn’t present itself and my arcnode losing its arcnode the number of available options didn’t exactly grow.

Then it happened, the caster was moved into a position where only 1 model blocked line of sight. An assassination plan was forming.

Issyriah was at 3 focus making her armor 16. There was at least 1 blackbane in range to run up for the feat. Kraken would be able to get los with its 5″ of movement and would be loaded up with full focus and full corpses. 3shade had a decent charge target that would bring him within 8″ of Issyria so he could use siphon bolt.

One problem factor could be Issyria’s ability Arcane Vortex could make things more interesting, but on average it was a sure thing.

I activated the blackbanes to prepare for the feat. 3shade charged the halberdier and boxed it. He then feated and started siphon bolting. The first bolt was directed at the model blocking los. It hit and the model was no more. 3Shade cast Siphon bolt once more hitting Issyria and doing a nice amount of damage, the second bolt hit the target as well leaving the caster on 2 boxes. The 3rd bolt hit and I decided to boost damage, just because.

Win on assassination.

Now the other player forgot about the arcane vortex, so I decided to do some calculation on how it would have affected my plan.

From the start 3shade had 1 goal, attempt to free up the Line of sight and remove the focus on the caster so the damage output on the Kraken’s shots goes up.

If the ability had been triggered it would have triggered for a max amount of 3 times as there was only 3 focus on the caster. With 3Shades focus pool even without siphoning this would have been possible. The Kraken would get a minimum of 3 shots (d3+1 means 2 minimum). And on average it would have been 4 shots.

If we assume the lowest number of shots will be available, then we can shoot at the model blocking los using the first pow 12, we boost for damage and this would remove it with all but the lowest rolls. Then the remaining shots on the small gun would be damaging at roll -1. Any damage done here is good as the main gun would be damaging at roll +4. This actually means that a shot from the main gun with a boosted damage roll needs to roll 1 more than average in order to one shot the caster.

An average roll on 3 dice is 10, the roll is at +4 so an average roll would be 14 in this case and Issyria has 15 boxes, so rolling an 11 on 3 dice would one shot her.

Of course rolling a double one to hit is possible, rolling more is also possible. When rolling the to hits on the siphon bolts, the double 1’s were also possible, however they didn’t happen and it resulted in a clean kill.

In the end I was happy my assassination plan proved solid and the assassination was over before all my pieces had activated.

This battle is solid proof that even if a battle is moving towards sure defeat, an opponent can still make a move that opens up a path to victory.

Round 4

Scenario: Outflank

For the last round of the day I got to play Niels de Vlieger, a player from my local meta. In all honesty I did way better than I would have expected facing his Legion list.

From the start he was picking off models left and right using either hit and run tactics with the angels or ranged attacks with the ravagore. The hex hunters want for one side of the board and the beasts remained central and close to the other zone.

I had deathjack occupy the right zone, for 2 reasons, 1 I didn’t want him to end up taking armor piercing hits and so the opposite table side from the angels seemed more than ok, 2ndly I wanted spell slinging capability without moving eDenny / my arcnode to much to one side of the field.

Through some toughs and the recursion between drudges and mc tralls I was able to keep pushing models into the zone for a while.

I made lots of use of eDenny’s weapon teleporting several lights that came out of the pot in front of DJ and out of the zone. I also managed to land a hellmouth on the pot removing all but 1 of its grunts.

eDenny ended up dominating the right zone while eVayl did the same to the left zone. We both tried to prevent scoring as much as possible and we ended the game at 4-5 in Niel’s advantage, resulting in a loss for me, but it was a good game.

Niels ended up on the 5th place so congrats for that, I ended up on the 11th spot. Which isn’t too shabby, considering 2 of my opponents were well above my current level, and as such winning against them wasn’t impossible, but it would have been a surprise for sure ^^.

I did take home one prize, I was awarded the best painting award, which was a nice reward for all the effort I put into having 2 fully painted lists ready for the event. A special thanks to Christophe because he declined the reward, having won it several times he made a really nice gesture and told the organizer he wanted it to go to someone else.

It was a nice event, we had a ton of fun, but we were happy when it was over 4 round days are hard 😀

The next few weeks I’ll be working on my play, hoping to improve for the next event, which will be on the 25th of April at Black Border Roeselare.

I added some visual content (caster pics and army lists) in this new video. I also added some youtube sound so it isn’t just silent video. And to top it off I also doubled the speed so it’s not 1h46 anymore.

I plan on improving on the art and extras I add to these videos, but it will be a slow grow and I hope to improve on the concept with each video.

A few weeks back when watching the PP twitch feed, another player in my local meta spoke the magic words “Why don’t we film our own battles?”.

A few days later I went shopping, well the intent was to look around and see what prices were like for various video cameras and tripods. I hit the jackpot when I saw that an interesting camera model was 50% off. And as it was the last one, I couldn’t really wait a few days and return, so I did what I’m good at “impuls buying”.

I am now the proud owner of a Canon Legria Mini.

It’s a small device but it does the job pretty fine. I also got a handy tripod.

Last week we set up one of the tables in order to film a first battle as a test. We made a few short vis to see how detailed everything on the table was and if we covered enough table space etc.

And ofc after that we recorded the first battle.

The recording was the easy part, I have never done video editing before, so editing the video took me longer than setting up equipment and filming.

I still need to make some art to show the casters and lists and other visuals to add during the battles perhaps. At this point I’m already happy I managed to record, edit and upload the video.

While both lists have their weakness, they also have potential on attrition, scenario and assassination. 3Shade obviously doesn’t have a great time facing spell / cold immune models and the blackbanes aren’t going to last long when there’s to much magical shooting all around.

I got in 3 games this week. All 3 were played using 3shade because he has some depth to him and I feel I need to dig some more in order to get to a better understanding.

I was able to get off a ranged assassination, and it felt good, however at the same time other people around the table saw a way to make a melee assassination happen and I didn’t see it. So while the basics for 3shade are seeping in, there’s always some other ways I still don’t pick up on automatically. This ofc all leads to “practice more”.

I’m also not 100% decided on which objective I’m taking with Gshade. On the one hand Arcane wonder is good in the scenarios where the objective is close to the advance deployment line, because getting within 4″ is simple and doesn’t involve getting up the field. ont the other hand Bunker has the advantage of taking the ranged destruction of the objective of the table, which has some use in the scenarios where the objective is further up.

Then of there’s The valor objective which feels interesting because you can get cover from it, the feerless part is of no use in Cryx ofc if you don’t have living models in your list or they have fearless.

So that’s a thing up for debate, I’m leaning towards bunker at this point, but nothing is set in stone. For 3shade, because for eDenny is’t Arcane wonder all the way.

Another aspect I still need some time to get around is “how to play 3shade when there is no assassination avilable”, A good example of that would be my last game last night vs Pvayl. I was reading the spell list, looking at the table and feeling pretty ok, then I saw the little cold immune logo and that made a few very solid options go away.

It was a pVayl tier list, and the pVayl player got to go first, so he was halfway up the table, I only had 8″ of targetting range on anything (tier bonus) and on top of that most of my models would just get charged and destroyed if I moved more than 4-5″ out of my deployment zone. Even my Kraken as there ware 2 Scythyans just waiting for it to get within 11″ and moving 4″ out of deployment would make that happen.

I got some good tips from more experienced players regarding my play in that game, better use of soul hunters to treat the heavies, some better placement options with the blackbanes to screen the kraken etc. Lucky for me this tier list doesn’t really come up in tournaments, but man it’s a good counter.

Speaking of, another game I played was vs a Tier 4 Zaal list, pretty much the same, magic weapons everywhere, models immune to blast and no soul collection… So a not so easy job to get trough. In hindsight I should have just parked the kraken and used it to remove at least 4 models each turn.

My goals for next week is to try and “not assassinate” and go for alternative plays, or at least look for them. I’m not going to pass up a sure assassination thats right in front of me ofc, but I’m curious to see how my play will evolve towards non-ideal match-ups.

We rolled off to see who go first turn. I won the roll and opted to go first.

My bloodwitches were deployed center left, the jack and Morty went on the center right. One stalker on each flank(edge of the board left and right), close to the left one a warwitch siren. Deathjack got advance deployed dead center.

The Menoth deployment was rather strange to me, as except for the unit of knights exemplar, all other models were deployed on the left side. Eiryss was also deployed way left, almost at the edge of the table.

Since we were both finding out how to play a new list clocks were turned off/ ignored and we just had some fun.

I made the mistake of moving Morty to far up when Sevy’s feat was still unused, and Morty without focus is a sad thing indeed. I also had the pleasure of seeing all my jack removed the same turn by unbuffed grunts of whom most were not weapon masters. So yea dice can be a bitch. Especially when a grunt does 18 damage to a stalker which has 18 boxes… This is by no means a “OMG DICE” statement, dice happen, I wouldn’t mind if I was the one rolling them either. It’s just that when you play Morty and you lose all heavies it’s pretty much over.

I used the bloodwitches as a tar pit, and while they kept those units busy for a bit, there were better options. My opponent sent Eiryss after the stalker, which was fine by me, as it liberated my other jacks and they could move without fear of Eiryss. The stalker removed Eiryss after 2 tries.

Conclusions:

troop spam means no Morty, period

Bloodwitches are a good tar pit, but that doesn’t mean they should be used for just that, I have to try and keep them available so I can put them to use at the right moment.

Use the feat earlier, I tried to save it for an amazing turn and then I ended up with 0 jacks…

keep in mind the opponents feat when moving Morty up to start scoring the turn after.

It was another fun game and I managed to get some experience with Morty, this is my second game fielding her and the previous game was about 8 months ago If I recall correctly.

My second game was on Friday against Brett, also a Menoth player. I fielded my good ole eDenny + 30 bane knights list, he chose pKreoss.

I chose the arcane wonder objective and so did my opponent.(see previous battle for details)

The scenario we rolled on was Recon:

We rolled to see who got first turn, I won the roll and opted to go first. Terrain wouldn’t hinder my troops as they all have Ghostly so the side didn’t really matter in this case and going first was the important factor.

I deployed one unit of bane knights on the right, one on the left and one in the center Denny, the bokur, Gorman and the skarlock were deployed between the center and the right unit of banes.

The warwitch siren and the Nightwretch were deployed between the center unit and the left one.

For advanced deployment Deathjack was deployed in front of Denny. The reason behind this is that there was a tower building at that location which made sure Denny and other important pieces could hide from any ranged treats.

The middle and left units ran forward, the right unit rand towards the center to come up behind the center unit.

I decided after some control area measuring and guessing, that I would try an early hellmouth using my arcnode. Turns out I was shy 1.5 inches. His caster was in the open next to the objective and surrounded by the choir. Landing a hit could have possibly removed the choir and damaged the caster for an initial few points. I also had a focus left for boosting on damage if I wanted to.

My opponent decided to use his feat to remove the center unit of bane knights and a number (I think 4) of the left unit. One model of the 3rd unit was removed as well, which was good as this triggered the vengeance.

I ended up moving Denny trough the tower (wraith walker was up) , and then I popped her feat. I moved my remaining bane knights into melee range (2″) and made some melee hits. The opposing models wouldn’t be able to respond as they were under feat and only had 0.5″ melee range. Deathjack took some heavy hits the turn before and had only one arm left and no movement. removing the last 3 errants gave Deathjack a soul, whic allowed him to heal d6. I rolled a 2, which is low but it was just right to bring back the left arm and the movement.

Deathjack charged Kreoss, the charge attack was a hit, so were the other initials, the damage rolls were below average and the attacks I bought after 2 were double one’s to hit and the others did mediocre damage, this resulted in a failed assassination. Turns out rolling a 6 on 2 dice is really hard.

We quit the game after that turn, if we continued Deathjack and Denny would have been easy pickings so no real surprise what would have happened.

Small painting update:

This guy is currently on the painting table. I love this model so much. And it’s not just good looking it actually plays really well on the tabletop as well.

My next post will be about the upcoming SR in March and my list pairing / lists for the event.

Last week on Thursday I went to Antwerp to visit the guys from “the puppeteers” gameclub.

I talked about upping my game time in a previous post, and adding a game night should help steer me towards my goal. Also having different players to practice with from different meta’s etc.

I arrived quit a bit later than I expected, so one game was all I could squeeze in, but it was a good game. Well “good” might not be the most fitting word for it, as my play sure had lots of holes in it, but it was fun.

I had the privilege of playing a game with Jonah, who is an outstanding guy. He brought his Menoth and fielded Feora with a bonded Judicator. I myself had Goreshade 3 with a Kraken on my end of the table.

It was my real attempt at fielding a 3shade list, and if you hadn’t noticed I just copied the list Tom Guan uses, because it’s a solid pick. Netlisting, or using lists other player’s assembled, is a good habit when starting your play experience with a new caster / faction.

The scenario we rolled on was “Recon” a new scenario in the SR 2015 pack.

We both chose the “Bunker” objective. For those who are not yet familiar with the changes in SR 2015, you now get to choose one of 6 objectives, which you have to add to each of your lists.

We rolled off and he won the roll. He opted to go first, I got to choose the table edge. The scenario has a central zone, with an objective on either side, this means that the objective itself is making it hard for a colossal to move straight into the zone, if the colossal is deployed dead center.

On side had a hill directly in between the objective and the deployment zone, the other had a house. The house was not in between like the hill, but more to the side, which would impact deployment for huge based models for sure. The side with the hill also had a forest which would provide an ideal hiding spot for my ghost raiders.

I opted to take the side with the hill, having some extra def can never hurt, and it made the deployment and first turn movement for the other player harder.

Turn 1 for my opponent consisted of running up with the entire army. His forces remained in the center, the flame guard up front in order to start shield walling the turns after and keeping the forces behind protected.

I feel this is also where the larger mistake was made in my opponents game. His Judicator was deployed behind the objective and ran straight forward, and was surrounded with troops. This meant that the only purpose for the Judicator would be limited to a very expensive rocket launcher. The Judicator is ofc also a very good rocket launcher so it didn’t side line the model, however it severely limited the treat the model could have and meant it would not participate in any melee action any time soon.

This also gave me a slight advantage on scenario as he wasn’t going to remove his own objective in order to allow the Judicator to get into the zone.

My first turn I ran the blackbanes behind the forest, keeping them safe from the Judicator and any other possible ranged treats. The soul hunters ran up the hill in hopes of staying safe with higher def. The scarlock placed occultation on the soul hunters, and also moved onto the hill.

Darrag used Death ride after moving onto the side of the hill and used light cav for better positioning. Soul hunters and gshade moved their 1″.

Aiakos moved forward and cast Escort. (1 was allocated to the Kraken).The Kraken moved up towards the hill in order to move more towards the center zone. As I move the first 2 inches, I notice I might actually be able to land a pretty decent shot with the main gun on the Flame guard.Flame guard who are not in shield wall and not under their mini-feat.

Once in place the Kraken takes a shot with the main gun at the center of the Flameguard. Using it’s 1 focus to boost to hit, and the shot lands, covering 5 models of the unit with the 4″ template. The model directly hit, is an auto kill, for the other 4 I need 7’s. My dice decided to help me out for a change, I rolled 3 7’s and and 8, removing all 4 models with blast damage.

SO far so good, bottom turn 1 and I already have removed half a unit, with one shot.

Top of 2, my opponent shield walls the flame guard and pops their mini feat. He also has a pretty good round of shooting with the Judicator, and ends up removing 2 Soul Hunters and leaving 2 more on fire. This balances out my lucky rolls on the Kraken shot.

The rest of his army is either to far away for melee actions, or lacking magical weapons in order to have any effect on the Blackbanes. The remaining Soul Hunters had Occultation so shooting them was not an option either.

Bottom of 2 I try to fabricate one of those amazing 3shade assassinations using the feat and I fail horribly. The arcnode doesn’t get where it needs to be, I forget about the mini feat on Flameguard and realize they can’t be made stationary, etc, etc. I charge my Kraken in with Scyting Touch and Dark Shroud, and I end up being slightly less than 1″ short…sad moment.

Still having stationary models all over does screw up focus management for my opponent, so it’s not an easy clean up turn after a feat gone wrong. Plus Darrag has 3shade in his magic bubble so damage will be reduced.

4 flameguard make it up to 3shade with charges, they do about 4 damage total. The avatar has fun with the Kraken removing almost an entire grid.(1 box left on the right grid)

Aiakos dies to an average roll on blast damage after a Judicator shot misses and deviates… this guys is awesome but it would be handy if he was easier to keep alive than a scrap thrall.

SO bottom of 3, no focus for Kraken, so I do damage to avatar but it only cripples on arm. I decide to go for that scenario point and charge 3shade into the objective. hitting sure isn’t a problem, my damage rolls on the other hand were the bare minimum.

I did 6 damage on the charge and didn’t manage to break armor on the 3 attack I bought after, which is just sad really. But dice are dice, sometimes they help, sometimes they don’t.

The game evolves into a grind fest where neither of us actually gets and advantage over the other, and my opponent decides to forfait because he really wants to head home and call it a night.

Action shot:

Hobby news

I have finished the last model for my Skorne list pairing so I get to take it easy when it comes to painting for a while.

I decided that I want to have 3shade and Mortenebra painted up so those will be my next project. It’s a good chance to find out if my painting skill has improved, since I will be revisiting my Cryx paint scheme and I have painted numerous models since I last used it.

I must say assembling Morty was an adventure, the model itself looks really nice, in fact her and 3shade are my top picks for best looking caster models when I comes to Cryx.

When Drilling the holes for pinning I had a slight accident, I managed to slip and the drill ended up in my thumb, red liquid everywhere. Dremel means it’s faster, however if you slip it can do more damage for sure. I suppose it’s fitting that Cryx models are bathed in blood right?

New Tech

I recently installed a new app called “Steam Genius”. It’s an app designed for us IOS user out there who want to keep track of their warmahordes game results.

A similar app existed for android but there was never a variant for IOS, so Steam Genius covers that now. I have recorded 1 battle so far, I’ll do an article on it once I have more experiences with the app. I can add so far that it runs really smooth.

I’ll be in Antwerp tomorrow and In Aalst on Friday, hopefully I get to have a nice number of games and I’ll be able to write up my experiences here next week.